US Tidbit -- The Las Vegas Sun reported today that Frank Han, the senior vice president of electronic commerce for Park Place Entertainment Corp. , left the casino and hotel operating company last week amid reports that Park Place is discontinuing its plans to develop an online gambling site.
Making Deals -- SureFire Commerce Inc. today completed the first phase of its merger with ebs Electronic Billing Systems AG. SureFire, which is based in Montreal, has issued about 2.7 million shares of its common stock to Munich-based ebs in return of 51 percent of ebs' shares. ... CryptoLogic is announcing a deal with ukbetting plc, the largest sports betting an online sports content provider in the United Kingdom. CryptoLogic's WagerLogic subsidiary will license Internet casino and poker software to ukbetting, which has 3.5 million users per month. Eric Semel, the CEO of ukbetting, said his group chose CryptoLogic software because it has a proven track record. "They are the obvious choice to bring online casino and poker to our large user base that will drive cross marketing opportunities and increase revenue from our sports content and betting business," he said. ... WorldWinner recently completed an agreement with Electronic Arts (EA) to provide cash tournaments for EA's online gaming site, called Pogo, which offers free information for game enthusiasts. On WorldWinner's Web site, the company offers online skill-based tournaments for cash prizes. ... Poker.com is entering a master license agreement with Pokersoft Corp. AVV of Curacao for the exclusive development of its skill-based poker technology. Poker.com will pay Pokersoft a licensing fee of $30,000 and 3 million shares of Poker.com common stock. The Curacao-based company will then receive 15 percent of the gross revenue generated by the software.